teaching and learning cinema

[above: the light at 9pm on Friday during Long Film For Ambient Light]

[The following is a short series of excerpts from an interview with Chris Fleming, recorded by Lucas, Friday 16th March 2007, 9pm. These quotes are cut from a longer conversation. You can also read a short note he wrote after the event, here.]

There’s something about the scale of it. When I first came in here I felt my eyes almost felt pulled on…because I’d been in my office all day… so it was really… I just kind of switched off…

LI: You’d said you were zoning oout?

CF: what does zoning out mean? Like a feeling that I didn’t know I was there but I knew I had been there. It’s really strange.

LI: how much time passed do you think in that period?

CF: five minutes? I don’t know.

Also this being framed by something that happened previously. It almost felt like an anchor. I found something vaguely comforting about the fact that something like that was being re-created.

The fact that it was done in the past lent it some weight?

CF – weight’s not the right word. Reassuring. It felt nice there was some continuity of tradition. Tradition’s not the right word, either, dignification. I really don’t know. My whole brain’s just switched off…

[continued, now outside the space]

It also felt a bit naughty coming in there…I was running out of the house. I’d been paralysed by wasting time, I could go in there and switch off without wasting time, there was a guiltless non-doing about it that I really enjoyed. The scale of it just shifts. The change in physicality. Like when you stand on somewhere really tall and you feel your stomach just move. That caused a shift in me that kicked something off, just the scale of it, it was big and enclosed, that was a defamiliarisation effect.

[above: the light at 2pm on Friday during Long Film For Ambient Light]

[The following is a short series of excerpts from an interview with Anne Walton, recorded by Lucas, Friday 16th March 2007, 2pm. These quotes are cut from a longer conversation. The full transcript will be more interesting!]

I felt a smoothness… like I was entering into something very smooth […] the light has something to do with it. And all the grey tones in this place. […] A slightly clinical feel. […] I couldn’t help noticing the curtains. Some kind of notion of theatre. Although I quickly realised they were just here, already a part of the space. I felt myself a part of the structure. […] As far as this being an event […] the physical structure and the structure that you… that this event is… it resonates with the notion of intervals and spaces.

When there isn’t much that’s been put here, I start to want to look at what’s been put here already… The little dotted recesses… in the concrete…

I quickly felt some kind of a longing – to be here, for much longer. … It’s a long film, and I’m only here for just a quick glimpse. So I feel…regretful.

[If I stayed longer] I imagine some of the initial romance and positive feelings would start to be challenged…

I started wondering whether lots of conversations will happen – is it a social space? A meditative space? Conversation can be great way to pass the time.

I feel as though if I stayed here longer… I’d do a lot of writing… from a state of relative emptiness… not useful writing, just a flowing writing…

The lightbulb … it is very electric… the thingness of it is very strong… it is a very sharp point in the centre of the space. It’s really crackling…

The time chart and the statement – made me feel supported in being here… they’re a kind of explanation. It helps to frame the experience for me… and give…not clues, but it reinforces…particularly the long scroll…somehow preparatory for my time here…

It’s quite zen …very zen … just attending to the present moment … I can imagine, having been I’m going to go away and take it with me…a consciousness of this slice of time in the space has been carved out, and it’s here, and I entered it for a brief moment, it’s almost like I dipped my toe into a stream and when I go away I know the stream’s there and others are going to come to the spot that’s been carved out for getting right into it … immersion…

Louise was struck by the austerity of this…I said yes, although for me austerity has a harshness about it, I don’t feel yet… There’s more of a sense of generosity in this space…

I’m glad to see it at this time, when it’s still pristine and unspoiled by human … habitation …

The Teaching & Learning Cinema invites you to “THIS TIME“, a film screening this Sunday, April 1st, 2007 6.30pm for a 7pm start at ‘Sydney’, Cleveland St (next to Fatima’s) (see http://officialsydney.com)
The screening follows along from a residency that Lucas Ihlein and Louise Curham have been doing in the majestic Track 12 at Performance Space’s new home at Carriageworks.
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A few folks who we invited to experience our private “screening” of Long Film for Ambient Light have begun to filter back with their thoughts after the event.

Mike and Deborah visited in its last half hour, late Saturday morning the 17th of March.

Mike sent us these thoughts: Continue Reading »

[Lucas and Flemo about 9pm on Friday 16 March, photo by Peter Shaw taken from outside Track 12]

A few folks who we invited to experience our private “screening” of Long Film for Ambient Light have begun to filter back with their thoughts after the event. First cab off the rank is Flemo.

Thanks for the invite to say something, although - at this stage - I’m unsure I have anything to say except thanks for the invite to say something. I was serious, by the way, about the idea of a “natural screensaver.” As much as applications have progressed, screensavers are still about the most interesting things computers do. Arriving late at night (-or late for me, a confirmed father and nerd), didn’t seem to bear out the screen-saver intuition. Perhaps this would have been different were I to have come during the day. So what of the film(ing), as I saw it? The experience of being in the space seemed to have an almost-sedating effect on me: there was something chruch-like - simply in the size of the space, the darkness I found quietening (and provided a kind of ‘cover’: a way of being non-selfconsciously alone with other people present); there was, I think, a kind of alteration of time and space that I can’t quite describe… or perhaps I don’t have the patience, now
mindful of having to leave my computer and get somewhere else soon.
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Long Film for Ambient Light related dream, 23 march 2007, 5.30am:
This bizarre dream popped up about 5 days after we did our experiment with Long Film. Talk about mental residue. Remember, all characters are fictional and their resemblance to any person living or dead etc…xx Lucas

We’re in New York and Anthony McCall is putting on a new show, including Long Film for Ambient Light. I’m in the gallery as LFFAL is being set up, it’s completely different from our understanding of the work. This version involves a long piece of perspex set into the wall high up towards the ceiling. On the perspex are printed representations of empty film frames. Behind the perspex film panel an area of wall has been removed, and light filters in from here. I ask Anthony where the light comes from - “the outside of the museum via the air conditioning duct,” she says. Yes, Anthony is a woman. A youngish one, too (although at the start of the dream she was a man, still quite young, and with a full head of hair, far more resembling McCall’s photos from the early 70s, than what I imagine he looks like now, balder and more statesmanlike in appearance.)
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16 march 2007

noon (written at 1.30pm)

I pressed go on the timer. Set it to 23 hours 59 minutes. But we still were setting up, so didn’t really take the moment to just be here. Kat was still vacuuming. The space felt clean and neat, there was a “coming into clarity” about the whole thing. But we weren’t quite there yet. I was aware of being slightly stressed with regards to this. Would have been better if we were ready in advance, but I was also quite amused that the film starts whether you are ready or not. In some sense, the film is kind of indifferent to my responses. It doesn’t care if I “attend” to it or not. On the other hand, the film needs me - without me, it is nothing. Maybe.
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14:40 Ground of my body, quite high tension, I am noticing the ‘base’ settings hence the description ‘ground of my body’. Column thoughts [feedback sheet had columns, used by no one except me and Walty unwillingly]. Strange how use of someone else’s specificity is having the effect of making us be present in this here and how (McCall’s specificity of this work in 1975). Continue Reading »

12 pm Fri Mar 16 to 12 pm Sat Mar 17E-mail to Cynthia today with some thoughts on the Long Film:

The Long Film was a very intense experience - my head did very strange things. It was unrelentingly social which I found very, very difficult. The intensity of such focus on a single space over such a time span was intense in the
extreme. Interesting that the 24 hours McCall framed was darkness book ended by light.

My best discovery was a very clear mental image of the sun in the sky acting like a bellows creating these fluctuations in the room [so in the end for me, this is a landscape film, how curious!]

I found the light bulb almost intolerable, it came to invade the room, a ‘tense object’ as one visitor described it even in daylight. At night, it felt like an attack. There was a sense at about 1am of being in solitary confinement without the benefit of being alone. I sat outside the room for many hours there - still in the building but just outside, trying to keep myself calm and as present as possible.
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big day today, meeting with kat and telling her all about the project, what we’re trying to do, the four works that we’re concentrating on. she’s our tech assistant, and will be helping us set the room up for long film for ambient light.
all these works have a concentration on time, pushing and pulling time. sometimes they seem to me to be a little dry, early 70s conceptualism, not much overt content referring to social situations. but i know that this is only a surface issue, and that under the surface these artists were concerned with about attention, concentration, the passage of time, and, well, mindfulness, and that they push against the spectacularisation of the image. whether they succeeded or not, maybe that’s what we’re trying to find out. and of course, how the hell can we tell whether or not they succeeded, since we’re working with approximate re-enactments with partial information, and a completely different culture. jeepers.
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